Wednesday, December 26, 2012

We the Dachsies With Moxie want to apologize for not blogging last week- WHN was suffering from a series of crippling panic attacks all week long that kept her curled up on the couch under the blankies and under the supervision of Nurse Tasha and Doctors Snoopy and Chip. She was starting to function better a couple of days before the Big Event, so no need to worry- she does have these from time to time, but it has been years since she had a week like last week. She should be back to being herself by the end of this week.

We had a fantastic Christmas! We went out Christmas Eve to look at all of the lights in our neighborhood, and then came home and WHN and Dad opened their gifts after we had a great smorgasbord! Turkey and roast beef and cheese- we were allowed a taste of each (and the "tastes" were not skimpy either!- WHN insisted that we make sure that the food was safe for Dad to eat!)We watched Dad's favorite movie all night and all day yesterday! We opened our gifts yesterday morning after Mass, since WHN had forgotten to recharge her camera battery so we have NO PHOTOS of the Christmas Eve fun! Dad gave WHN a new nightgown and the fifth season of Burn Notice on DVD, he also gave her a teapot, a mug, tray and spoon rest that said Keep Calm and Carry On from the English Shop in St Charles. She also received two pairs of fleece pjs and a ring, but our gifts were the best- we gave her a green headband with a dachsie on it, and a new iPhone cover with a dachsie that looks like Tasha on it. We gave Dad a new Snoopy inflatable and he loved it. WHN gave him a Snoopy and Red Baron plane set for the train layout and we had her take movies of it to explain it, and she gave him some books and a pair of transit cars for his layout- they look like the cars on MetroLink here in St Louis. We really scored with our gifts- new collars for each of us as well as lots of squeaky toys! Tasha and Snoopy were busy trying to decide whose toy was whose since they love squeakies. The WDA sent us wheat free treats and a fabulous ornament for our tree, and Jazzi and Addy sent us placemats for each of us from the gift exchange.(the toys that came with the placemats were field dressed ten minutes after opening- we think that Tasha set a new record) Molly the Wally sent us each a squeaky toy, all the way from the UK! We spent the day keeping Mom safe and warm while we set about protecting our new toys. Click on the link below to see our photos from yesterday- WHN is wearing the new flannel pjs her BFF sent her!

A Man for This Season, and All Seasons

There is only one Thomas More: A man of tender nobility, subtle intellect, and forceful conviction, all rooted in profound fidelity to the larger commonwealth of Christendom outside and above Tudor England.

A day after the 2012 Summer Olympics closed in London, Joseph Pearce wrote that he felt like his “body had been covered in slime. I also felt a great sense of gratitude that I had shaken the smut and dirt from my sandals and had left the sordid culture of which I was once a part.”
Given the grand sweep of British history, those are harsh words from a former Londoner. An English Catholic convert and author, Pearce is now a resident Fellow at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. But he merely said what many people thought: that the Olympic closing ceremony they watched on global television was one long liturgy of overripe vulgarity, a jamboree of cheesy and offensive pop culture. In effect, it showcased a nation grasping to reinvent itself by escaping back to adolescence while ignoring its own real past.
This shouldn’t surprise us. Europe’s work of reinvention, or self-delusion, has been going on for decades, not only in Britain but across the continent. One of the key obstacles to the process is the depth of Europe’s Christian roots. As recent popes and many others have pointed out, there really is no “Europe” without its historic Christian grounding. Anyone wanting a new Britain, or a new Europe, needs to get rid of the old one first. So diminishing Christianity and its influence becomes a priority. And that includes rewriting the narrative on many of Christianity’s achievements and heroes.
By way of evidence: Consider the case of Thomas More, lawyer, humanist, statesman and saint; martyred by England’s King Henry VIII in 1535; canonized in 1935; celebrated in Robert Bolt’s brilliant 1960 play A Man for All Seasons; and more recently trashed as proud, intolerant, and devious in Hilary Mantel’s best-selling 2009 novel, Wolf Hall, now set for release as a 2013 BBC2 miniseries.
Critics of More are not new. His detractors had a voice well before his beheading. As Henry VIII’s chancellor, he earned a reputation as a hammer of heretics and a fierce opponent of Martin Luther and William Tyndale. Yet Erasmus of Rotterdam revered More as a scholar and friend. Jonathan Swift, the great Anglo-Irish writer, described him as “a person of the greatest virtue this kingdom [of England] ever produced.” When Pope John Paul II named Thomas More as patron saint of statesmen in 2000, he cited More’s witness to the “primacy of truth over power” at the cost of his life. He noted that even outside the Church, More “is acknowledged as a source of inspiration for a political system which has as its supreme goal the service of the human person.”
Ten years later, speaking to leaders of British society in Westminster Hall, Pope Benedict XVI returned to the same theme. Benedict noted that More “is admired by believers and non-believers alike for the integrity with which he followed his conscience, even at the cost of displeasing the sovereign whose ‘good servant’ he was, because he chose to serve God first.”
So which is it: More the saint or More the sinner? Was he the ruthless, sexually repressed rage addict suggested by historians like G.R. Elton, fearful of change and driven by helpless fury? Or was he the humble and generous “man for all seasons” praised by his friend Robert Whittinton and so many others among his contemporaries? Were there really two Thomas Mores: the young, open-minded humanist, and the older royal courtier, gripped by religious fanaticism?
The moral integrity of More’s life has been argued with persuasive skill in the various works of Gerard Wegemer, among many others. And Peter Ackroyd’s fine biography, The Life of Thomas More, vividly captures the whole extraordinary man—his virtues, his flaws, and the decisive nature of his moment in history. Travis Curtright has now added to the luster of the real More’s legacy with his excellent new book The One Thomas More.
As the title suggests,Curtright sees Thomas More’s life as a consistent, organic record of Christian witness, start to finish; a thoroughly logical integration of humanism, piety, politics and polemical theology. There is only “one” Thomas More—a man of tender nobility, subtle intellect, and forceful conviction, all rooted in profound fidelity to the larger commonwealth of Christendom outside and above Tudor England. For Curtright, More embodied “the Erasmian ideal of wedding learning with virtue,” lived through a vigorous engagement with temporal affairs. He treats More’s scholarly critics with proper respect while methodically dismantling their arguments; and he does it by carefully unpacking and applying three of More’s most important written works: The Life of Pico Mirandola,The History of Richard III, and Utopia.
Curtright correctly sees that More’s real source of annoyance for many modern revisionist critics is his faith. If revisionists like Elton implicitly define “humanism” as excluding religious faith, then a man like Thomas More and the whole vast Christian tradition of integrating faith and reason become serious irritants. As Curtright observes:

The entire structures of the two Mores and real More theories congeal around [critics’] notions of a "true" humanism that excludes the possibility of faith and reason working together, a position transparently stated by [G.R.] Elton and one that influences contemporary condemnations of More as a "fanatic."

Bickering over the “real” Thomas More has importance beyond the scholarly community. Why? Because just as the nutty premises of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code confused millions by reinventing the backstory of Christian belief, so too the novel Wolf Hall offers a revisionist Thomas More wrapped in popular melodrama. The author, Hilary Mantel, a lapsed Catholic whose disgust for the Church is a matter of public record, drew her portrait of More in part from the work of Elton. The “hero” of her novel is Thomas Cromwell—More’s tormentor, and in reality, a man widely loathed by his contemporaries as an administratively gifted but scheming and vindictive bully. Unlike the widespread European shock that greeted More’s judicial murder, few wept for Cromwell when he finally followed More to the scaffold.The One Thomas More is not a book for beachside browsing. While it’s well-written, modest in size and rich in content, it is a scholarly effort. Some casual readers may find it heavier than they bargained for. But as a resource on Thomas More, it’s invaluable. Curtright’s final chapter, “Iconic Mores on Trial,” has special importance. It directly challenges Mantel’s loose treatment of facts, for which it deserves wide circulation.
Having said all this, Thomas More has been dead nearly 500 years. Why should his legacy matter today?
Barring relief from the courts, Christian entities, employers, and ministers in the coming year will face a range of unhappy choices. As the Affordable Care Act takes force and the HHS contraceptive mandate imposes itself on Christian life, Catholic and other Christian leaders can refuse to comply, either declining to pay the consequent fines in outright civil disobedience, or trying to pay them; they can divest themselves of their impacted Christian institutions; they can seek some unexplored compromise or way of circumventing the law; or they can simply give in and comply with the government coercion under protest.
Good people can obviously disagree on the strategy to deal with such serious matters. But the cost of choosing the last course—simply cooperating with the HHS mandate and its evil effects under protest—would be bitterly high and heavily damaging to the witness of the Church in the United States. Having fought loudly and hard for religious liberty over the past year, in part because of the HHS mandate, America’s Catholic bishops cannot simply grumble and shrug, and go along with the mandate now, without implicating themselves in cowardice. Their current resolve risks unraveling unless they reaffirm their opposition to the mandate forcefully and as a united body. The past can be a useful teacher. One of its lessons is this: The passage of time can invite confusion and doubt—and both work against courage.
Again: Why does Thomas More still matter? Why does he matter right now?
More’s final work, scribbled in the Tower of London and smuggled out before his death, was The Sadness of Christ. In it, he contrasts the focus and energy of Judas with the sleepiness of the Apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane. He then applies the parable to his own day and the abject surrender of England’s bishops to the will of Henry VIII: “Does not this contrast between the traitors and the Apostles present to us a clear and sharp mirror image . . . a sad and terrible view of what has happened through the ages from those times to our own? Why do not bishops contemplate in this scene their own somnolence?"
More urges the bishops not to fall asleep “while virtue and the faith are placed in jeopardy.” In the face of Tudor bullying, he begs them, “Do not be afraid”—this from a layman on the brink of his own execution.
Of course, that was then. This is now. America 2012 is a very long way, in so many different ways, from England 1535.
But readers might nonetheless profit in the coming months from some reflection on the life of Sir Thomas. We might also take a moment to remember More’s friend and fellow martyr, John Fisher, the only bishop who refused to bend to the king’s will; the man who shortly before his own arrest told his brother bishops: “. . . the fort has been betrayed even [by] them that should have defended it.”Charles J. Chaput, a Capuchin Franciscan, is the archbishop of Philadelphia and the author of Render Unto Caesar.Receive Public Discourse by email, become a fan of Public Discourse on Facebook, follow Public Discourse on Twitter, and sign up for the Public Discourse RSS feed.Support the work of Public Discourse by making a secure donationto The Witherspoon Institute.Copyright 2012 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

Monday, December 17, 2012

WHN heard from Tasha's beau's mom, Miss Kim today- Apparently Shiloh of Team Beaglebratz is having some stomach issues and Miss Kim needs our help and support:" But now I need to include a somewhat questionable bit of news - Shiloh
has not been feeling very good since Saturday. He upchucked in my
bedroom a little Saturday nite then later Sunday evening he upchucked
3 more times - part of it was undigested dinner - he also pooped (NOT
diarrhea thank goodness) in the house which is a very rare thing for
him This morning he would not eat his breakfast (I don't remember
him ever doing this) - I had even added a bit of cottage cheese which
is suppose to be good for upset tummies and is one of his fav treats -
he practically turned and ran from it. He did drink a small bit of
water this morning. I am wondering something and maybe you would know
or ask those in Blogville - I know dogs will sometimes eat grass when
they have upset tummies but he has eaten quite a bit since Saturday -
do you know if that could be a symptom of something? I didn't have
time this morning to post about it but I have a small bit on my
Facebook page.
Anyway, I am at work so best get off here for now. I REALLY don't
want to be here. If you have time could you do a little PSA asking
about the grass-eating - he;s done a little before but it seems like
he is doing more this time. And I would appreciate a bit of POTP for
Shiloh - I am a nervous wreck sitting here at work when I REALLY want
to be at home with my little man. I could tell he was feeling a bit
on the miserable side when I left - didn't even eat the small
milk-bones I left for him. Thank you."If anyone know anything that can help, please let us know ASAP or Team Beaglebratz at their blog!

Dad, Chip and Snoopy at the Lewis and Clark statue, St Charles, Missouri

We had a long weekend- we suspect that it was a plot to wear us out for once since the weather has not been conducive for our two mile walks each night when Dad finally gets home from work! Saturdaywe ran some errands after we saw Santa paws- Kmart and then home to watch tv with Dad and WHN on the couch, then out for confession (WHN was NOT in for a long time- we suspect a return trip very soon)Then dinner and more snoozing on the couch.Sunday we went to Mass, then our devoted slaves took us to St. Charles, Missouri for a nice long walkabout! The weather was great and we were very good (except for the barkies from Snoopy but he is working on getting over his fear of new people and places) Ginger's pink rolling command post came along (the Thai mobile has long since been retired as it was worn out beyond repair) and Tasha rode in comfort for most of the visit since she has become very clingy again and wanted WHN to herself. Dad took us for a walk along the Missouri River while WHN explored the Lewis and Clark Memorial statue which is right on the river! We loved visiting the site where Lewis and Clark actually met and from which they began their epic journey, and even better was Dad showing Snoopy the train station and the two cabooses that were located near the statue. (St Charles was the first official capitol of Missouri, from 1821 to 1826, while the permanent capitol city was being laid out and built in Jefferson City, Missouri.) It has a great Victorian feel to the Main Street area, which has buildings still in use from the 1820s! Dad and WHN will be going back Christmas Eve for lunch and to see Santa again- we think without us this time, and to start a new family tradition since we will be living here for the rest of our lives! While Dad was inside checking out The English Shop, WHN was talking with a lady who loves dachsies, and had just lost hers a few days after Anna Rose went to the Rainbow Bridge. We of course were very popular and Snoopy behaved well- he was very barky but not frenzied as he was at PetSmart- we kept him well supervised and leashed, and he did start to relax a little in St Charles. Tasha was clingy and Chip kept his eye on Snoopy and helped him to learn to relax in public. Today he has homework to do, both with WHN and Dad when he gets home. WHN has taken lots of photos of the Snoop Man and posted them on her Shutterfly site, but you can see them if you click on the link below- be forewarned- she has not yet labelled all of the photos! http://dachsieswithmoxie.shutterfly.com/snoopy/5

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Snoopy here, reporting in! This has been a PAWSOME last two weeks! I have both WHN and Dad well trained to my needs and I get along quite well with Chip, our beloved pack leader, and Tasha, the queen of the urban jungle! I love to go walkies and am very good on my leash- I just want to run forever! I am on a restricted diet- I have terrible allergies, and have to eat Natural Balance fish and sweet potato only or I scratch like crazy! (And I don't like taking Benadryl for the itchies- so I wolf down my kibbly bits even faster than the Thai Master used to !)

I was still unsure of my place here in the pack, so it took me most of the last two weeks to muster up the courage to sleep in the big bed, but I finally did and it is great! WHn has to sleep without a pillow as I need to rest on it and I need to sleep curled in her arms, so she is usually waking up with an achy back! Tasha and Chip filled me in on Ginger, Thai and Anna Rose, and I am trying my best to help WHN and Dad heal a little bit. WHN is always marvelling at how much I walk like Ginger but that I look like this hawt gawjus dachsie named Puddles- have to meet her! I eat like Thai and when Dad gets home from work, I am on him like white on rice! I help him run the Christmas tree train layout and helped him put the tree and lights up! I am completely housebroken (ok, except for when we are abandoned at home for more than two minutes, but don't tell anyone that, ok?). The mailman and UPS man fear me- and I help Chip run his company, Dachsund Security, LLC- he is thinking of making me a junior partner!~

I am going to PetSMart for training and so far have been very barky as I do not do well in new places or with new people- I have had three homes in less than a month and I am tired! I was in rescue for over a year then was adopted out for only a year (the others moved to NY and for some reason could not find a "pet friendly" place to stay!They even used a prong collar on me and I am NOT a pitbull or any other large dog!) then I found myself back in rescue before WHN and Dad came and got me. According to them, everything they were told about me was a lie (except for the fact that I hate getting a bath) I am a very good boy and love bug, once you get to know me!

We went to se Santa paws today- we all wore these strange outfits but I told Santa not to worry about me- I have my new furever home, and to pray that no one adopts me on the DRNA website- I want to stay here!

Saturday, December 1, 2012

We, the DWM, would like to introduce to Blogville its newest resident, our DRNA foster brother SNOOPY!!! He joined us last night and fits in quite well with us! While he has not eaten yet, he does like pizza crust and takes treats from WHN quite nicely, no teeth at all! He chose to sleep on the couch instead of in the big bed but we know that he will be joining us there soon. He is about 7 years old and just returned to the rescue after only a year- his previous "owners" moved to NY and could not find a pet friendly home AND what WHN thinks is even worse, used a PRONG COLLAR on him for walkies! He is a red and white piebald tweenie, and needs to lose a couple of pounds but that won't take long here at Camp DWM! He LOVES Dad and follows him everywhere! He reminds WHN of Ginger- the snausagey body and tail, the lovely fur.... Tasha scares him with her bark, and he is skittish with loud sounds, but he will adjust easily to life here. He will be going for training at PetSmart as he needs some socialization assistance but does very well in the car and on the leash- he is a puller and is very strong!

We learned of him only Tuesday and of course WHN said yes, without thinking- now, will she make it three in a row and fail yet again as a foster mom?